With the advent of possible energy shortages and the ever-increasing costs of energy along with major concerns about the environment, there has been a concurrent renewed interest in energy conservation technology. A particular area or field where energy is often managed less than satisfactorily is that of heat gains and losses in both commercial and residential buildings through poorly insulated wall areas such as windows and the like.
One of the basic tenants of conventional solar energy saving principles for buildings is that substantially large and south-facing windows can be used to gain heat during sunny winter days. However, these relatively large windows are also unfortunately responsible for heat loss during cold winter nights and days due to re-radiation of the heat from the interior of the building through the windows to the colder air. On the other hand, during hot summer days, it is desirable to keep the heat from the sunlight during the day out of the interior or the house and to allow the heat in the house to radiate to the outside during the night. Therefore, in order to take optimum advantage of the heating and cooling cycles of the sun or absence thereof during day and night periods, it is often necessary to be able to move insulation in place over the windows or to retract it at appropriate times throughout the transfer of heat therethrough or to prohibit the transfer of heat therethrough as desired. This need for movable insulation panels exists not only for windows but also in a variety of other settings such as in apertures formed in partition walls, doors and other contexts.
This need for a movable insulation panel has resulted in a renewed interest in the use of so-called cellular window coverings since such structures contain numerous individual dead air space cells and are readily expandable and contractible. Such cellular window coverings are well known in the art. Typically, conventional cellular shading products are made using a flat material referred to as a web. The web is folded and/or stacked into some form, then bound along lines or seams and converted to a cellular, collapsible sheet. One type of cellular window covering is made from two flat sheets of material, which are pleated and then glued face to face at the apex of the folds to form the cells. Although somewhat useful, conventional cellular window coverings structures however suffer from numerous drawbacks.
For example, since only a single layer of cells is used, opposed sides of the cells are directly in contact with the temperature extremes which the window covering tends to insulate and hence, heat transfer through the cells is still substantial.
Also, because of the inherent construction of prior art cellular insulating panels, should a leak occur in any of the cells, the leak would compromise the efficiency of the panel altogether and potentially lead to its breakdown.
Furthermore, because of their inherent construction, these prior art cellular insulating panels are not well adapted to being only deflated in a predetermined region thereof so as to allow selective retraction of a portion thereof.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an improved insulating panel opening. It is a general object of the present invention to provide such an improved insulating panel.